Desires Remain — Their Object Changes
In the Christian who has learned the full secret of victory these natural desires are lifted to a new plane. His desires now do not center in the old self-life. They center in Christ. To him to live is Christ. His whole desire is Christ. He still desires to enjoy things, but only in a way that shall glorify God. He desires to get things, but to get them for God, not for self. His desire to accomplish things is to do things for God.
This does not mean that the victorious Christian will not be open to fierce temptations, just as our Lord was,—real temptations that require a real conquest. But as he abides in Christ, accepting by faith the victory that Christ already has won, instead of striving to struggle against these assaults of the enemy, the temptations remain merely temptations, and do not pass into the sins of lust or covetousness or pride.
These three channels of temptation appear to correspond in a remarkable way with the three-fold nature of man—body, soul and spirit. And for the man in victory all these are Christ’s. Here is the human body with all the natural appetites intact. But the Christian who is reckoning the old self-life to be dead knows that this body now, with all its natural desires, is “for the Lord; and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor. 6:13), for “Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit that is in you, that ye have from God? and ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a price: glorify God therefore in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19, 20).